Discuss lifestyle changes to better survive disasters. This category is for topics pertaining to being self reliant such as DIY, farming, alternative energy, autonomous solutions to water collection and waste removal, etc.

zobmiedown wrote:I hear you divepirate. I would love to put in more and bigger beds for the Squash, Mellons, Zuccini, and cucumbers and free up the spaces they are in for other/more things. I just dont see that working with the rabbits not eating everything that sprouted until I can get some good fencing put up and beds built before any planting could occur. Then again I would also have to run water lines to any additional areas and diggin in teh soil here is like digging in the middle of a concrete pad.

Why are you not eating the rabbits? You could plant some cover crops to lure them into your traps!! 10 a day, everyday!!!

"If you are prepped for pandemic flu, you are more than prepped for Ebola. And pandemic flu is hella more likely, that's the one that scares me, personally." - Duodecima...and she's a freaking doctor. What are you?

Honestly murphman because I was under the impression that they carried diseases and worms. I may have to rethink this. I have a few 22 rifles and could have fun doing this. Civilization here ends three miles down the road into nothing but open desert and scrub brush. I could ride my quad down there harvest some and make them for dinner. I need to talk to animal control and find out if there are infact know to be diseased.

zobmiedown wrote:Honestly murphman because I was under the impression that they carried diseases and worms. I may have to rethink this. I have a few 22 rifles and could have fun doing this. Civilization here ends three miles down the road into nothing but open desert and scrub brush. I could ride my quad down there harvest some and make them for dinner. I need to talk to animal control and find out if there are infact know to be diseased.

Trap one (there is a great thread on here of traps and snares). Skin it. You will know before you are done if it has worms or not. Not sure how far south you are, but we always waited until first frost to hunt rabbits in PA.

It is a 50/50 proposition of having worms for squirrels where I am in Florida (assuming the same for rabbit, but we see so few), but with the overwhelming numbers in suburbia, and my neighbors abhorrent looks when I asked if they have ever eaten squirrel, I figure I am ok for the first two weeks if SHTF. In two weeks, I figure I will have about 50 quarts of squirrel canned and ready to last.

"If you are prepped for pandemic flu, you are more than prepped for Ebola. And pandemic flu is hella more likely, that's the one that scares me, personally." - Duodecima...and she's a freaking doctor. What are you?

We are actually about 30 minutes by car from teh U.S. Mexico border so we are pretty far south. We have no shortage of SHTF wild game though. Deer, Javalina (Wild pig), rabbit, quail and dove all roam our area. Lots of coyotee and rattle snakes as well. No squirls though.

Now to get back on the gardening side of things. Found two new pumpkins growing yesterday. Finally.... I refused to believe that 12 plants would only have two pumpkins. Also have lemon cucumbers finally coming. Small still but they will get bigger. I am excited to try these. Other cucumbers are still blooming but nothing forming yet.

We are getting ready to head to my in laws house for a vacation so my buddy is going to take over the watering twice a day for a week. Hopefully our monsoon rains will come while we are away and give him a hand. I am so looking forward to some beach time. My buddy knows the watering as he helps out regularly while hanging out. Besides he helped build all the beds, fill them with soil, and plant them or rather over plant them so he has a vested interest in keeping them cared for. Not to mention his garden so far has been a fail. Rabbits, mice and birds have stolen everything he has planted. He needs some dogs in his front yard to help with critter contol and has already laid claim to one or two of our german shepard puppies due any day now.....lol.

Now I need to go pick some veggies. As always zuccini, yellow squash, and radishes need to be harvested. Peas were alread picked and eaten by the kids yesterday. Next year I plan to tripple the number of peas planted to try and keep up with the kids snacking daily....lol

OK quick question. My broccoli that has seed pods. Do I trim the stalks with the pods on them off? Will that help the plants produce more of the tasty parts. Same thing with my spinich and lettuce?

Like I have said before this is my first year gardening so I am not sure what to do when things go to seeds.

We have had such a hot spring and summer this year that almost all the trees I sprouted from seeds have dried out and died. They are even in the shade all day and its just been too hot for them. Still have some apple and lemon sprouts hanging in.

Picked and ate two small lemon cucumbers and one small regular cucumber last night. They were pretty tasty. I really like the lemon ones.

If you let the seeds get too far along, the plant will not produce anything as it will believe its lifecycle is over and die, so the answer about your pods is...it depends. I always trim the broccoli flowers off before the seed pods start and it will keep producing. I learned that years ago from my mother. Once we let a broccoli go to seed, that was the end of eating it for us.

Try cutting them off part of the plant, or some of hte the entier plants depending upon how many you have, and see what happens. I used to get 6+ seeds per pod from the broccoli I grew, so having only one plant full of seed pods will cover next year's plants.

"If you are prepped for pandemic flu, you are more than prepped for Ebola. And pandemic flu is hella more likely, that's the one that scares me, personally." - Duodecima...and she's a freaking doctor. What are you?

Thanks Murphman I will cut the seed pod stalks off today. Hopefully the brocolli will start producing again.

Got home from vacation last night to find the gardens were not happy. Everything was wilted big time from the heat. Apparently monsoon rolled in while we were gone so my buddy didnt think he needed to water as much. Pumpkin and squash were the worst. I flooded all the beds night and then it raind for a good part of the night too. Things are looking happier today already. Watered heavily again this morning and will do it again this evening. I think monsoon saved the garden as with out that rain we may have lost it all. Okra has a worse aphid problem than before. None present when we left but now all the okra have the little pests. Doing the pressure srapy on them again. Melon plants seem to have taken off since we left. WE even have a few blackberrys now on the plant but they are still green. Zuccini still producing at a large rate but yellow squash did not produce a single thing the whole time we were gone. Not sure what happened there. Butternut sqush has its first sqaush on it now too. Cucumbers are finally producing so I should have some worth picking later this week. Lemon cucumbers are producing well and we picked some last night. One pumpkin light orange already. I will try and get picks of what we picked last night when we got home posted later today.

And my female German Sherpard produced 4 male puppies while we were gone. Future garden protectors they will be.

OK so Monsoon season is here with a vengeance. Rain every day for two weeks. Twice I lost the sheet tin off the back patio roof to the wind and had to reattach it. First time lost half of it used longer bigger screws and more of them. Then two days later lost the other half and again used longer bigger screws. That seems to have fixed the issue.

On the garden note though I am starting to wonder if it is now getting too much water. When the whole 4 acres is under water every morning I cant help but worry that the garden may be getting too much water daily now. Not sure how to keep mother nature from soaking it though as we are forecasted rain daily thru Saturday. This is one wet desert at the moment.

In the past couple of weeks we have harvested peas, wax beans, okra, artichoke, tomatoes (many varieties) lots of different peppers, Cucumbers, Zucchini (as always) radishes, potatoes, onions, broccoli, lettuce, and carrots. Finally things are producing the way I envisioned and production seems to be increasing.

The trimming of the seed pods off the lettuce and broccoli works like a charm and the broccoli is starting to produce more heads. Even have honey dew melons growing about the size of softballs now and the pumpkins are bigger than basket balls and blooming out of control again.

We too just got back from vacation and found our "upper" garden a little wilted. We watered right away but lost some parsnips (my first time growing these). Also there was an all out mammal invasion. Deer got the roses. Probably rabbits or deer got the tops of the peppers. Moles destroyed about 6 square feet of beds killing onions, broccoli, carrots, and parsnips. Killing might be too strong of a word but the vegetables are NOT happy. I imagine large pockets of air around the roots are to blame. I went to the feed store and bought 2 mole traps and I thirst for blood. Set them last night.

On the bright side our main garden looks awesome. The water timer/soaker hoses are working great and kept everything growing. We have beans, peas, yellow squash, bell peppers, lemon and slicing cucumbers and beets that we harvest every other day. Our crop of Roma tomatoes is crazy and we will be canning our ass off soon.

It seems like just lately our plants are taking off and producing. I don't know why most of them took this long but finally the tomatoes in the ground have gotten bigger and have fruit on them. The cucumber I planted two months after the first one are catching up to the first ones already and are full of blooms and the melons are finally getting to be bigger plants and branching out every where.

However our yellow squash has halted any production which is weird as it was the first to produce along with the zucchini which seems to be slowing as well. No yellow squash at all in the last two weeks but still getting 4-8 zucchini every week. The pumpkin plants have 7 big pumpkins but wilted back while we were gone and now are coming back strong and full of blooms again. So there is some hope there.

My wife took 10 zucchini to work last week as we had a few extra and have grown a little tired of it. What she brought home yesterday was 3 loaves of zucchini bread one of her coworkers made out of the zucchini. I will have to get the recipe since it is delicious.

The theories are that it was too hot before, even though we were watering twice a day they may have not gotten enough water, The soil had to cure more, or They just prefer the monsoon rain over the tap water. But ever since the rains moved in everything has taken off. With the rains moving in the temps are at least 10 degrees cooler and some times 20. We go from 100+ to the 80's and 90's during monsoon. I just keep telling myself that at least we don't get to freezing until November so we still have time to grow and harvest enough to can, freeze and dehydrate before the end of our growing season.

I have learned a lot this first year and still have a lot of questions still to answer. We have also decided that some things we grew this year we may not mess with next year at all and use that space for other things that are doing better and we like more anyway. Such as we are not even going to mess with carrots next year. They take too much time and space and we can replace them with things that will grow more and produce faster such as peas since we have yet to have any to freeze as the kids eat them as fast as they appear. So the solution to that is to grow more than they can eat daily in order to be able to store some for later. The wax beans are suffering the same fate. Hopefully the green beans and lima beans are coming soon to give the wax beans a break from the kids.

Ok this page has been awfully quite lately. I hope everyone is ok and it is merely that yogardens have een producing so much that you have not had time to post on here. So I thought I would post some new pics for everytone to see.

Nine Acorn Squash, one Butternut Squash, and One Pumpkin.

Regular cucumbers, Lemon Cucumbers, Japanese Cucumbers, Tomatoes, and a carrot.

My daughter litterally eats 6 of the lemon cucumbers a day as snacks and the rest of the family including the in laws want us to grow more of them next year. As for the Japanese cucumbers we will not do themnext year no one likes them as much as the othes an they are only really good if cooked.

Cow Peas, Lima Beans, Green Beans, Wax Beans, and some Okra. I hve finally been able to get enough beans to have some in the freezer for after the grow season. Okra has been a big hit and seems to get eaten as fast as it grows.

Some of the peppers we picked yesterday. I have a drawer in the fridge of noting but peppers I need to do something with before they go bad.

More tomatoes roma and beef steak. They seem small to me. I did rip two tomatoes out of the beds and transplan them under a tree as a test to see how they would do under a tree. They were bonnie grape and black cherry tomatoe plants. Cant find any one that likes them at all. The plants are dong good under the tree and are producing faster than he ones in the beds. But since no one likes them at all the tomatoes from them just go straight into the compost bin.

Honey dew melons a water melon, two more acorn squash and lots of pumpkins. The big pumpkin that is still green (back row in front of the chair) got so heavy hanging ove the bed that it self harvested but is continuing to rippen off the vine. There is one pumpkin still on the vine that is bigger than that one and many smaller ones. Same with the melons and the Acorn Squash and Butter nut Squash. Prorbaly going to have to pick sqaushe this weekend.

Zuccini plants have slower to only a couple a week. The big yellow squash plant has stopped even blooming. I think I will remove the yellow squash as there are two smaller plants that it is shading that are starting to produce.

Corn is a complete loss. Every earhas gone bad on the plant. I talked to some other people in our area that have tried corn in the past and they had the ame thing happen for a couple of years and finally gave up on it. I already pulled it out of one bed and let the ears drie out and pulled the kernals off of them. Planning on doing the rest this weekend. I figured since I want to get chickens I would keep he dried kernals as chicken feed.

Edited to add: I picked all the corn today and shucked it. I managed to save a kitchen sink full. Caterpillars are the culprit. They were in every damn ear. Funny thing is I have not found a caterpillar on any other plant in my entire garden. Going to rip the plants out this afternoon and plant a second crop or zucchini and yellow squash in their place. I still have a long enough grow season to pull of a second planting of both.

Hi everyone, sorry to do a "drive-by" (especially since I've been radio-silent for so long), but I received this promo from SeedsNow today and wanted to pass it on. Take care.

$3 Off orders over $10. We want you to get a head-start on your fall/winter planting. Order before the month of August is over and we'll automatically take $3 off any orders that are over $10. USE PROMO CODE: GDHS3XN. Apply code during checkout process. CODE EXPIRES AFTER 8/31/2013. SeedsNow

P7 thanks for the deal info. I really l the different colors of Swiss chard. I had never even heard of Swiss chard until this forum and found some seeds at home depot here and planted them. Turns out we really like it. We eat the stalks of the leave like celery and my wife has even put them in potato salad. Any way I am going to order some of the different as it will also add color to the vegetable gardens and be aesthetically pleasing especially since we seem to have a hard time keeping her flowers in pots alive but the edible gardens do just fine.

Have had caterpillar issues lately. Killed ten yesterday that I found while picking/harvesting the gardens. One the size of my middle finger on the beef steak tomatoes which made a huge ness when squished under my boot.

Ok on to the new discovery....... Any one in the south west may find this info great so I thought I would share.

This is a mesquite tree in my back yard. We have them all over the property. They are damn near impossible to kill. We have removed some with a back-ho and they have come back from the remaining roots under the ground. They are full of nasty thorns and generally a pain in the ass. However they grow well with no maintenance or effort at all. So I trim them up to look nice and use the trimmed braches as fire wood and it's very good for grilling.

Harvested pods.
Ground up in the blender run thru a kitchen strainer to remove the big chunks (set aside for chicken feed) then a flower sifter to get the powder. This took me about a half an hour to produce from one plastic shopping bag of the pods. Guess what it is delicious and naturally sweet. So I made a batter with it adding garlic and onion powder battered some fresh vegetables from the garden and fried them in olive oil. Simply delicious. Now for those that have read some of my posts you know I am not a tomato fan at all. much like I was not a bell pepper fan until I grew my own. Well having never had a fried green tomato before in my life I figured why not try it. OK so I am now a fried green tomato in mesquite flour fan big time.

So the New question for every one is what grows naturally in your yard that annoys you that might actually be a good food source for free?

Sorry for the double post in a row but the last one was getting large and so I figured I would break it into two.

This is what happens when your kids go back to school for the first week and bring home a bug t share which leave mom and dad sick for a few days. Yep the garden got neglected.

The good news is that I already have a full freezer of nothing but home grown vegetables to last us over the non-growing months On top of giving some away every week.

In other news plants that stopped producing have been replaced and new plant are up and growing daily for a second crop this year. Some things we planted and found we did not like have been replaced with new ones we know we like. So next year we will have a better idea of what to plant and what not too.

I was in Rite-Aid today and saw that they have Ferry-Morse flower, veg, and herb seeds (labeled, "Guaranteed to Grow") at 75%-off and watering accessories 50%-off. I picked up lettuce leaf basil, tarragon, broad leaf sage, and bouquet dill seeds for $.45 each.

I had not thought to dry them. I may have to try that. I bought 12 canning jars yesterday and some canning seasoning while I was at Wal-Mart getting a new microwave. Figured I would give canning a try. I also put up three large jars of ground mesquite flour and three gallons of mesquite chicken feed last night for future endeavors and didn't even make dent in the pods I have harvested.

I'm a canner....lol Sunday we put up 14 Jars of pickles from the garden. 7 dill in whole spear and sliced form and 7 Bread and Butter consisting of sliced burpee and lemon cucumbers and two jars of peperchini. It was actually fun and although I thought it would be difficult it was really easy. So yesterday I went back to Wal-mart and got 24 more quart jars and more pickling seasoning (All they had left on the shelves). My wife and I are now looking at what else we can put up for storage using canning. I researched putting up various meat and apparently I need to head back to Wal-Mart and get a pressure canner for that. So it is on my list for the next time we head into town.

We also made zucchini \and pumpkin bread from the garden using our newly harvest mesquite flour. It was wonderful and in a day the kids ate almost all of it. (6 Loaves and some muffins).

On the mesquite flour note. I read that it can relieve headaches and stomach issues. Well Friday my wife had a headache at work all day and was alternating Tylenol and Motrin with no relief. When she got home I suggest she try a spoon full in her ice water. 15 minutes later the headache was gone and so were her menstrual cramps. Now my daughter plans on trying that during her next menstrual cycle and my wife this weekend after her birth control shot as she always cramps for two days after. So not only do they pick gardens wash vegetable and fruits bake bread from scratch help with our new canning operation but now they are lab rats to.

Removed dead zucchini and squash plants last weekend and replaced with peas in all those beds to put some nitrates back into them. Ok that and hopefully finally grow more peas than the kids cat eat right off the plants. Pumpkin plants are no longer blooming so I am thinking of pulling them and starting a new crop of them. Been killing caterpillars at an alarming rate lately and the sudden heat wave and lack of rain have me back to watering the beds by hand again.

zobmiedown wrote:I'm a canner...--I'm baker, I'm a chef and I'm a farmer, I tend my crops out in the sun... I'm a prepper, I'm (cool-playspace) builder, I'm a teacher and I'm a winner, I run my own clinical trials...

Fixed that for ya (apologies, SMB )

Zobmiedown, I really enjoy all your pix and AARs. It's awesome that you are teaching your children (and friends) where food really comes from and you're inculcating in them a love of the healthful, self-sufficient lifestyle.

You might find Geoff Lawton's video, Urban Permaculture: The Micro Space, of interest. He has it, as well as, Surviving The Coming Crises; Property Purchase Check List; Absolute In Abundance; and 5 Acre Abundance On A Budget for free on his site. I originally posted this in Z-Preps Virgin Sustainable Hugelkultur Permaculture Gardener thread; I think you might also be able to put some of it to use. There are some really interesting ideas for inter planting around fruit trees.

ETA: thx for the mesquite tree info. I'd never heard of doing anything with them but burning the wood in the barbeque.

P7..... Thanks for fixing that for me but you left out uber cool jedi master more trained than yoda
That and I can't claim baker as my wife and daughter did the baking. I did how ever pick the zucchini and pumpkin cook it and puree it though. So I guess baking prepper would be a better title
So yesterday my wife got home from work with a headache again. One spoon of mesquite powder in a glass of water and fifteen minutes later it was gone again. So I added a small Tupperware container of it to her purse so she has it at work when she gets another headache from working with her brother.

I have 5 full 5 gallon buckets from home depot now of mesquite pods drying out and waiting on the blender to grind them up. I am hoping to harvest more thru the rest of this week. Truly the pods I have in buckets came from one tree in the back and one in the front yard. Both of which still have pods on them. I also have one full 5 gallon bucket of ground pods that were not ideal for human consumption that were sorted out and ground in the blender to be chicken feed. Now to get some chickens since they can eat a lot of our vegetable scraps and the less than ideal mesquite pods. That and both the chicken and the eggs would be a good prep and are delicious (Which begs the question of which got fried first the chicken or the egg ). That and since I go thru a dozen eggs a week any way and the wife has finally agreed to having chickens. What she does not realize is that chickens are a "gateway" animal prep. We all know that once you get chickens you move in to the hard core animals like rabbits, ducks, cows, pigs, sheep, and goats. It a slippery slope. She has still not figured out when she says a little I go all out.

So the peas I planted a couple of weeks ago are up and all blooming. Last weekend I replaced our first crop of squash, zucchini and potatoes with peas in those three grow beds. Partly to put nitrates back in the soil (which buy the way mesquite does too) and partly because I am determined to grow more peas than the kids can eat right off the plants so that I can put some up in the freezer and can some.

Speaking of canning My wife and I went thru our freezers and removed all the Tupperware containers of leftovers that she decided to freeze. Yep going to can all the leftover soups, salsa and meats that we were keeping in the freezers for longer term storage and we wont loose them to a power outage. At least that is what she believes. I think she does not realize that we have two generators that could keep the fridges and freezers going in such an incident. Now to get a pressure cooker this week.

Oh and four of my acorn squash have now turned orange. Not sure if we are going to eat it can it bake with it or grill it but it will be processed some how.

Lastly my first crop of pumpkin plants are about done. Two small pumpkins left on them no new blooms for a couple of weeks and they look like they are in bad shape. But I think I still have enough time for a second planting and crop this season. So I am going to replace them. I still have a couple of months before the weather gets to freezing here.

Edited to Add: Got the pressure cooker yesterday and canned 4 quarts of okra as a test run. We are going to do more Okra and green and wax beans today since the freezer has been over run with vegetables from the garden. Total of 10 one gallon zip lock bags that we are going to can to make some room in the freezers today.

I don't have pics right now, but I've harvested two cucumbers (finally), and have another one growing on the vine, and quite a few tomatoes growing right now (though none are ripe just yet). I ended up making a pretty awesome homemade spiderweb-like trellis out of twine tied between the fence rail the pot is sitting on and hanging plant hooks in the underside of the upstairs neighbor's deck.

Next year should be a LOT more interesting, though, as I'm seriously looking for a house right now. I plan on having a good in-the-ground (not-potted) garden next year that may span most of an acre or more, lol. It just depends on what I feel up to next year.

I'll try to post pics as I can over the next two days (my "weekend" off of work).

jdev, Congrats on you harvest. Any thing you do this year will only help you learn and prepare for your new home and garden when you got them. I honestly wish I had started small years ago and worked out the bugs prior to taking on what I did for the first time this year. Although I have had fun learning things this year.

zobmiedown wrote:jdev, Congrats on you harvest. Any thing you do this year will only help you learn and prepare for your new home and garden when you got them. I honestly wish I had started small years ago and worked out the bugs prior to taking on what I did for the first time this year. Although I have had fun learning things this year.

Thanks! That's pretty much what I'm thinking; it's all just a learning experience this year. And it really has been! The house I'm going to look at tomorrow already has a raised garden bed in place, so that might give me a bit of a boost when getting it going next year. I have a feeling I'm going to end up needing to buy a truck, though, lol.

Careful it starts with a truck and next thing you know you have a tractor and a trailer too.....

Along the same note I got a pressure cooker Friday and over the weekend we now have 54 jars of various vegetables and leftover soups canned for storage and on the shelf. So just when we thought we had nothing left to can..... Nope went and picked okra and green beans. Have at least a jar of each if not two that I can put up for storage. We also used our mesquite flour to make 5 loaves of pumpkin and 5 loaves of zucchini bread and my daughter made a dozen mesquite tortillas.

Our second crops plantings (to replace things that have died off) are all sprouted in just a week or so already. Mostly we put in more zucchini, yellow squash, and lemon cucumbers. That and we put in 4 bed of nothing but peas to put nitrates back into them as well as just maybe I can possibly (fingers crossed) grow them faster than the kids can eat them. Lastly pumpkins came out yesterday and we replanted that bed (you all know me, Over planted that bed) with more pumpkins and some acorn squash. All the seeds from that bed came from one harvested pumpkin and one acorn squash that caterpillars had bored into the outer layer of but not gotten all the way to the seeds.

I will say this for the gardens..... They have been fun and interesting this year. We have learned a lot and are going to try some different things tonight as further tests to see how things work our. The gardens have also been a lot oops I meant an incredible amount of work at times, but damn have we eaten very well and very healthy.